Tales of Phantasia
is a role-playing video game developed by Wolf Team and published by Namco for the Super Famicom in December 1995; it is the first game released in the ''Tales series, and is notable for being the system's second largest game, after its spiritual successor Star Ocean, being at most 48 Mb. The game follows Cless Albein on his quest for vengeance when his hometown is massacred by forces intending to resurrect the old villain Dhaos. After Dhaos is resurrected, Cless and his friends must organize all forces that can defeat Dhaos and return peace to the world. A spin off, Narikiri Dungeon, was released for the Game Boy Color in 2000 and later remade, along with the original game, for the PlayStation Portable in 2010. Plot The game begins with a cutscene showing a group of warriors desperately battling Dhaos. Dhaos escapes into the future, only to find a group of adults anticipating his appearance and is entombed. Two of these adults are Miguel and Maria Albein, who have a son Cless. Twelve years later, Miguel asks Cless about the pendant he wears but Cless goes hunting with his friend Chester. After the two go hunting, they return to town, finding the village massacred, Cless' parents and Chester's sister dead. Chester remains to bury the inhabitants while Cless goes on to Euclid. In Euclid, Cless is brought in by his uncle, but he's betrayed to Mars, one of Dhaos' soldiers. Mars takes Cless' pendant and throws him in the prison. Cless manages to escape with the help of a fatally wounded prisoner and soon discovers the prisoner's daughter, Mint, who he takes along. They both escape from jail and are rescued by Tornix Morrison, who has also taken in Chester. Morrison informs the teenagers that he, along with Cless' parents and Mint's mother, had sealed Dhaos twelve years previously and a group of soldiers lead by Mars are intent on resurrecting him. Morrison refuses to let the teenagers take action but they decide to go anyway. They go to the tomb where they witness Dhaos' resurrection. Before Dhaos kills them all, Tornix sends Mint and Cless back a century to find aid. In the past, Mint and Cless learn about the present ability of magic, which has become diminished in the future. They seek and recruit Claus, a notable practitioner in magic, to aid their quest. They also recruit the elven hybrid Arche to their party and obtain numerous spirits to help them in battle. The four defeat Dhaos in that time period but he escapes. The four then decide to travel back to the present to defeat Dhaos there. The team appears victorious, only to be visited by time traveling elves revealing that Dhaos is a threat in the future as well. Development The game was developed by Wolf Team, a developer who had previously released games published by Telenet Japan. As Telenet lost its business, Wolf Team approached an alternate publisher to realize their game, settling on Namco. Namco desired numerous changes to the game which delayed the released into 1995. In that time, most of the developers working on the game departed Wolf Team in favor of beginning their own company, Tri-Ace, which has produced the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile series. The original game was never released in North America as a result of Nintendo abandoned production of video games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in favor of the Nintendo 64. The game was later released on the PlayStation in 1998 around the time Tales of Destiny was released. This version was also not released in North America. Fan translations for both the Super Famicom and PlayStation exist so that either version may be played in English. The first official release of the game in English was for the Game Boy Advance. An anime series has also been released from 2004 to 2006, which was released in America in 2007. The original game was remade for the PlayStation Portable in 2008, featuring voices for all text. An iOS version was released in 2013, heavily based on the freemium format, but was discontinued a year later. Category:Tales series Category:Super Famicom games